| Abstract: |
The standard cosmological model has met with enormous empirical success over the past two decades. Continued testing of the model is highly warranted as it relies on additional components beyond the standard model of particle physics: the cold dark matter, the cosmological constant, and some mechanism for generating initial density perturbations. Additional motivation comes from a number of empirical suggestions of deficiencies in the model, with the most statistically significant among these a mismatch between different methods for determining the current rate of the expansion of space (the Hubble constant). In this talk I will present our use of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization data from the third generation camera on the South Pole Telescope (SPT-3G) to provide stringent tests of the standard cosmological model and determine the Hubble constant with a standard error of 1.2% using CMB polarization data alone. |
